The microbubble concentration study for the sonoporation efectiveness in vitro

Abstract

Ultrasound can temporally increase the permeability of cell membrane, facilitating the access of exogenous molecules into the cells and tissues. The phenomenon is also known as sonoporation. Sonoporation in vitro is most effective when the ultrasonic energy is used to amplify the oscillation and collapse of the microbubbles induced by ultrasound contrast agent. In this study, we used CHO cells to investigate the effectiveness of sonoporation in vitro, in the presence of SonoVue microbubbles at 0 and 3 h post preparation. Our results showed that the instantaneous microbubble concentration decreased exponentially and dropped down to 10 % at 3 hours. The effectiveness of sonoporation was observed to be largely dependent on the microbubble concentration. Consistently with the decrease of microbubble concentration, the number of sonoporated cells was also decreased, demonstrating the importance of the effective concentration of microbubbles.